Rebecca Walker Blog

"An
anti-war march, Saturday, through the streets of Tel Aviv. Pro-war
shouters collect like flies along the side of the route - the Magav
keeps them surrounded, but sometimes they're a nose-distance away,
fist-thrashing and enraged. We move from Rabin Square along Ibn Gvirol
to the Cinemateque, Arab and Jewish Israelis, side-by-side. Stop the killing. We want a different future for our peoples - a future of peace, we chant.

"Here you go: Fossil hunters
working in an open-pit coal mine in Colombia have discovered the
remains of 28 giant snakes that ruled the earth for 10 million years
during the prehistoric period. The "Titanboas" weighed 1.25 tons and
stretched 45 feet long. The snake snacked on turtles and ancient
ancestors of the modern crocodile. It's possible that the extinction of
the dinosaurs 65 million years ago opened the opportunity for the
Titanboa's evolution. By comparison, the longest living species
recorded is a 33-foot reticulated python from Southeast Asia, although
the species average is only 20 feet."

Is this not the most amazing thing you've ever heard? 10 MILLION YEARS. 45 FEET LONG. I can't help but link the biblical fear of --and need to subdue--serpents to this. The reptilian part of the human brain obviously transcends modern ideas of time.

I love this posthumous memoir from editing great Ted Solotaroff, published in the current issue of The Nation. The vignettes about working with writers are endlessly fascinating.This one about James Baldwin, the civil rights movement, and miscegenation is a fave:

"The climax of the second act of our relationship came in early 1963.
Norman had commissioned a piece by James Baldwin on the Black Muslim
movement and had done a good deal of hand-holding in the prolonged
course of Baldwin's writing it. By the time Baldwin finally finished the
piece, it had grown into the book-length journey through the shadowland
of black militancy that would be published as "The Fire Next Time." When
Norman inquired about it, Baldwin told him that it had turned out to be
too long for Commentary and that it had been sent to The New
Yorker. Already in a fury, Norman then found out that The New
Yorker had accepted and scheduled it. A ton of fat went into the
fire.

This, in turn, further energized Norman's rage by activating his
memories of growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where the Jewish kids
were oppressed and the black kids were their oppressors. One night,
Baldwin showed up and Norman let him have it. Baldwin said he should
write the tirade he was hearing, in effect providing reparation by
giving Norman an idea for a powerful piece of his own. Indeed, Norman
was so turned on by the idea and its boldness that he was able to blast
through his writer's block to produce his famous essay "My Negro
Problem--And Ours." I think he was also emboldened by the opportunity to
announce a truth, like the one about success, that none in his liberal
cohort dared to admit and that would put him right back at the center of
attention.

Normally, a piece by a member of the staff circulated in manuscript like
any other and benefited from our comments. But Norman's came around
already in type, not even galleys but page proofs, all set to lead off
the next issue. It was the first time he had openly pulled rank, and it
stung. All the more so when he wound up his self-exposé of the
fear- and hate-twisted feelings of whites--liberals no less than
reactionaries--toward blacks by making a large and, to me, very dubious
point that the stigma of color and the hope of ending it as a poison on
both sides of the racial barrier would not come in time, by way of the
liberal panacea of integration, to spare us Baldwin's "fire":

I share this hope, but I cannot see how it will ever be realized unless
color does in fact disappear: and that means not integration, it
means assimilation, it means--let the brutal word come
out--miscegenation. The Black Muslims, like their racist counterparts in
the white world, accuse the "so-called Negro leaders" of secretly
pursuing miscegenation as a goal. The racists are wrong, but I wish they
were right, for I believe that the wholesale merging of the two races is
the most desirable alternative for everyone concerned.

Up to that point, "My Negro Problem--And Ours" had been a nakedly candid
account of how Norman's boyhood experiences in Brownsville had left a
residue of fear, hatred and envy of blacks in his psyche, which gave the
lie to liberal racial pieties. But for him to then try to trump
integration with miscegenation was very troubling: first, because of the
heroic civil rights movement in the South that daily was gaining wider
and deeper Northern support through its nonviolent strategy and
practice; and second, because he was doing so in a banner piece for the
"new Commentary," which was trying to chart a course for pressing
political and social reform. I thought it through and decided that I
couldn't feel right working there if I didn't let him know what I
thought. So I walked down to his office and we had it out. As clearly as
I can remember, the discussion went along these lines:

"I guess since you sent this around in pages, it's set in stone."

"What do you want to say about it?"

"I think it's courageous, strong and valuable up to the end. But I think
the conclusion you come to about the solution being miscegenation is
untimely, to say the least, and all wet if the deep-down feelings are
what you say they are. I think it will do you and the magazine a lot of
harm, and I think you should reconsider it."

By then he had turned to ice. "Is that all?" he said.

"No, it isn't. There are my own reasons. We're trying to keep the image
and values of a more humane America alive and working, and about the
only concrete political action toward that end is the civil rights
movement. What you're saying in effect to those black ministers and
students who are risking their lives is to stop trying to integrate,
stop trying to claim their constitutional rights and liberties, and find
some white chick or guy and have babies. That's how it's going to be
read."

He said coldly, "I'm not proposing miscegenation as a solution but as
the best outcome, given the refusal of whites, particularly liberals, to
own up to their real feelings about Negroes." Then he said, his voice
clenched with anger, "I don't ever want to hear you tell me again what's
good or bad for Commentary. Ever!"

I could sense we were now on the fast track to an explosion that would
end with my leaving the magazine--which I wasn't prepared to do. "Well,
thanks for hearing me out," I said, and then got up and left.

There was some hue and cry about the miscegenation issue, but it was
mostly swallowed up by the applause the piece received. Norman was back
at his favorite place, and I was moved toward the periphery at
Commentary."

The election of 2008 broke many barriers, not the least was its demolishing the cult of masculinity.

By Rebecca Walker

Barack
Obama’s journey to the White House was punctuated by watershed moments:
Obama addressing untold thousands in Berlin, and millions more in his
televised speech on race. Obama sending love to his wife and daughters
via the big screen at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Michelle Obama symbolically crashing the gates of the White House in
her stunning red dress. Then there was the final presidential debate,
when Obama showed the world what it means to be a man in America, circa
right now.

At Belmont University, McCain played the
confrontational “tough guy,” bringing the pain to back up his pre-fight
taunt to “whip Obama’s you-know-what.” But as McCain waxed pugilistic
on issues of abortion, taxation and Joe the Plumber, Obama talked about
“sacred sexuality,” and expressed concern for middle class Americans
losing their financial footing. Audience polling called the debate
overwhelmingly for Obama, and David Gergen, with trademark nonpartisan
gravitas, said McCain looked angry. Obama was the voice of reason. But
something else was going on. Two tropes of masculinity were battling
for dominance.

The skirmish was as much about re-writing the
narrative of male power as it was about winning the election. Think
John Wayne vs. the Dalai Lama, Bernard Madoff vs Martin Luther King,
and George Bush vs Al Gore, all over again. Who would prevail? The man
who would prosecute an ongoing ground war against mortal enemies, or
the one who would attempt peaceful resolution? The one who would empty
the coffers of charitable foundations, or the one who would fight for
all Americans to be recognized as whole human beings? The one who would
drill in the arctic, or face an inconvenient truth? A third generation
military man with seven-make that eight-homes, or a multiracial Harvard
Law graduate and community organizer with one house, a Ford Escape and
a bike?

It was the next chapter in the great American story of
individuals breaking out of restrictive stereotypes based on race,
class and gender.

Thirty years ago women demanded freedom from
oppressive ideals of femininity. Today more and more men are refusing
the toxic role of “being a man.” The debate was a turning point in a
larger reckoning, a tacit acknowledgment that John Wayne, the standard-
bearer of American masculinity for over five decades, may not have been
good for America.

The rules of traditional heterosexual
masculinity are still so pervasive in American culture, almost any male
over twelve can tick them off with ease. Don’t cry, or even feel. Don’t
engage in complex strategic processing; take the easier road and slug
disagreements out instead. Win those skirmishes, or be tagged “gay”-the
worst kind of slight in a homophobic male environment defined by sexual
conquest of women, the more powerful the better. Regardless of race or
class, real men should make a lot of money and have the power to hire
and fire, like Fifty Cent and Donald Trump, as proof of their
dominance. Some African-American men display their resistance to white
male dominance, and thus their own brand of male power, by embracing an
anti-intellectual, “too cool for school” posture, a perfect example of
a masculine trope undermining the success of the person be hind the
mask. And even though Asian-American men are often emasculated in our
culture, they can lean on the mythological martial skills of their
ancestors to claim a kind of uber-dominance. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan,
Lao Tzu, and Mao Zedong are some of the most famous fighters in the
world.

There are other criteria, but the underlying message is
clear: follow the rules of the cult of masculinity and you will live to
see another day. Slip up and be humiliated, or worse. Just ask the
stay-at-home dads struggling for the respect of their peers in
corporate America, or the gay and transgender men beaten up on any
given night by groups of men yelling “faggot.”

Enter Barack
Obama, who rose to the highest office expressing a willingness to meet
with America’s known enemies. On the campaign trail, he shared his
feelings openly. On election night, he was photographed holding the
hand of his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson. When Obama talks about
people losing their homes and being unable to afford to send their kids
to college, his words seem to come from the heart, the compassionate
place marked “for women only” for so long.

Obama’s ideologically
diverse cabinet is another indicator that he doesn’t believe in a
top-down, top-dog approach, or that the best ideas will come from the
man at the head of the table. Solutions are expected to come as a
result of dynamic interactions between exceptional individuals. He’s
not afraid to articulate a vision that includes the safety and well
being of the LGBT community, and he doesn’t shy away from supporting a
woman’s right to make difficult, and often heart-wrenching, choices
about what to do with her body, be it terminate a pregnancy or act as a
surrogate for another woman’s child. Obama’s value as a man isn’t in
his bank account; it’s in his openness to changing the game and
identifying the players necessary to do it successfully.

Finally,
there is Michelle Obama, the coup de grace. Wife, best friend, and his
“rock,” as he said in his victory speech. Michelle is Barack’s secret
weapon, and he consistently acknowledges that their relationship is the
engine of his success. When Obama told Barbara Walters that he figured
out long ago that “if mama ain’t happy, no one is,” a lot of couples
laughed out loud at home. It spoke to a certain truth about successful
heterosexual partnerships: that cultivating interdependence with a
woman is a much better idea than trying to dominate her. Obama’s
fatherhood, too, seems as important to him as his public policy.

The
genius of it all is that Obama appears to have supplanted many of the
traditional elements of masculinity without sacrificing his virility
and clear intention to protect American interests by any means
necessary. He plays a competitive game of basketball and pulls off a
wicked poker face while making stealth moves behind the scenes.His sex
appeal is palpable, as the millions of viewers drawn to the recent
vacation photo of him shirtless in Hawaii prove, as does the intimacy
the Obamas display everywhere they appear.

Obama’s unique
blend of openness and strength has tremendous appeal to men seeking to
liberate themselves from an archaic and ineffectual model of
masculinity without sacrificing their swagger. He stands for the
millions of men who have always defined their manhood on their own
terms, but have never had this level of cultural support for their
choices.

For those looking for a role model for their children,
Obama is also a welcome change. Nathalie Hopkinson, co-author of
“Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop
Generation,” speaks for many parents when describing the shift she’s
seen in her seven year old son over the last months. He’s become
President of his class, taken to wearing a tie and blazer to school and
traded in his backpack for a briefcase. All of this bodes well for a
nation plagued by increasing violence and falling test scores, but we
will have to wait and see how Obama’s style plays out as he goes head
to head with Dmitriy Anatolyevich Medved, Hu Jintao and Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. To be deemed an acceptable mode of leadership, Obama’s
“enlightened masculinity” will need to restore some semblance of peace
in the Middle East and faith in American markets abroad.

As men
abandon dominance as a way of moving in the world, women will have to
continue to evolve their identities as well. Thanks to the women’s
movement most American women today see themselves as equal, if not
superior, to men. But women still have to continue to shed the
powerful, if sublimated, fantasy of a knight in shining armor coming
forward to protect and defend. After givinga recent speech on
contemporary masculinity at St Louis University, I met several women
who said they lost respect for boyfriends who expressed vulnerability,
and men said they felt pressured to prove their manliness by protecting
their girlfriends from the advances of other men.

Truth be
told, the final presidential debate was about women, too. We watched,
calculating how quickly we could evolve. Would we be safe with a
President who shares his feelings and doesn’t get spitting mad? What
kind of fundamental changes would we need to make in order to be
congruent with the new paradigm?

If Michelle Obama is any
indication, we will need to become more comfortable playing all
possible roles-mentor, wife, mother, defender, “rock”-while being
defined by none. Her willingness to be a true counterpart, secure in
her power and flowing between roles, rather than an adversary competing
for the top spot or a self-sacrificing and resentful subordinate, means
that our new First Family provides Americans of both sexes a model for
reaching beyond outdated ideas about gender. This is good news in
difficult times, because ultimately, in the words of Abraham Lincoln,
upon whose bible Obama will take the oath of office, “A house divided
against itself cannot stand.”

I love prefabs. I think they're the answer to unsustainable living. Impermanent, earth friendly, affordable. This one is small, and marketed to developing countries and dislocated people. Imagine this instead of trailers in New Orleans.

On May 26, 1996, Mariana Cook visited Barack and
Michelle Obama in Hyde Park as part of a photography project on couples
in America. What follows is excerpted from her interviews with them.

MICHELLE OBAMA: There is a strong possibility that Barack will
pursue a political career, although it’s unclear. There is a little
tension with that. I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of
a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.

When you are involved in politics, your life is an open book, and
people can come in who don’t necessarily have good intent. I’m pretty
private, and like to surround myself with people that I trust and love.
In politics you’ve got to open yourself to a lot of different people.
There is a possibility that our futures will go that way, even though I
want to have kids and travel, spend time with family, and like spending
time with friends. But we are going to be busy people doing lots of
stuff. And it’ll be interesting to see what life has to offer. In many
ways, we are here for the ride, just sort of seeing what opportunities
open themselves up. And the more you experiment the easier it is to do
different things. If I had stayed in a law firm and made partner, my
life would be completely different. I wouldn’t know the people I know,
and I would be more risk-averse. Barack has helped me loosen up and
feel comfortable with taking risks, not doing things the traditional
way and sort of testing it out, because that is how he grew up. I’m
more traditional; he’s the one in the couple that, I think, is the less
traditional individual. You can probably tell from the photographs—he’s
just more out there, more flamboyant. I’m more, like, “Well, let’s wait
and see. What did that look like? How much does it weigh?”

BARACK OBAMA: All my life, I have been stitching together a family,
through stories or memories or friends or ideas. Michelle has had a
very different background—very stable, two-parent family, mother at
home, brother and dog, living in the same house all their lives. We
represent two strands of family life in this country—the strand that is
very stable and solid, and then the strand that is breaking out of the
constraints of traditional families, travelling, separated, mobile. I
think there was that strand in me of imagining what it would be like to
have a stable, solid, secure family life.

Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong
sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also
think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people
don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this
tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is
vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both
of those things is what attracted me to her. And then what sustains our
relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do
with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I
can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely,
but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways.
And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort
of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is
separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and
thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and
mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a
life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of
surprise or wonder about the other person.

In the face of gloomy news about the state of publishing, I predict the book will have a huge resurgence. At the end of a day of tapping, or the beginning of a day with no tapping planned, there is nothing more comforting than to lie in bed with a lovely book. The feel of it in my hand is satisfying; the paper, the pool of yellow light on me and the paper, the turning of the page, my single-pointed absorption in another world.

We each come to literature in our own way. For some, the
gift is bestowed by a helpful governess who guides our fingers over the
letters in a primer. For others, a private tutor first enlightens us to
the majesty of the written word. How you arrive is immaterial. What is
important now is that you forget all that and learn to read anew. In my
literary criticism, I have become known as a champion of the eternal
verities and a scold of the trendy and the fashionable. I have essayed
to instruct your writers in how to write correctly. Now I will teach
you to read correctly.

When we see a word, we must ask ourselves foremost, What
does it mean? This is the first step in comprehension. When we have
accomplished this, we can proceed to the next, and so on. In due
course, we have read the sentence in toto. By returning to the
beginning of the sentence to perform a close reading, we unlock its
essence. I learned this skill at university. Although born in the
States, I journeyed abroad for my education and underwent my
intellectual coming of age at Oxford. I remember when the first
dispatches of Dirty Realism made their way across the Atlantic. I pored
over each latest issue of Granta as if it contained the Holy
Word. And perhaps it did. One of my favorites from that time has always
been Raymond Carver, in particular his affecting tale “Leave the Porch
Light On, It’ll Be Dark.”

His family are members of the Luo ethnic group. Obama Sr. was born into a Muslim family, but was an atheist before he came to the United States.Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting with the name Onyango Obama in the British colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Roman Catholicism
to Islam. Onyango had at least three wives; Barack Obama Sr. was the
son of Akumu, the second wife. However, he was raised by Onyango's
third wife, Sarah, after Akumu left her family and separated from her husband in 1945. Obama Sr. was married in 1954 at the age of eighteen, in a tribal ceremony to Kezia, with whom he had four children.

At the age of 23, Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa, leaving behind a pregnant Kezia and their infant son. He had
already turned away from Islam and become an atheist by the time he
moved to the United States. On 2 February 1961, Obama Sr. married fellow student Ann Dunham in Maui, Hawaii.Obama Sr.'s and Dunham's son, Barack Obama II,
was born on August 4, 1961. Dunham left school to care for the baby,
while Obama Sr. completed his degree. He graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, leaving shortly thereafter to travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard University in the fall.

Later that summer, Dunham and the year-old baby Barack stopped to visit her friends in Mercer Island, Washington, the Seattle suburb where she had grown up, before joining Obama Sr. in Cambridge. However, mother and son soon returned to Seattle, where she enrolled at the University of Washington.Dunham, missing her family, then moved back to Hawaii and filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964. Obama Sr. did not contest, and the divorce was granted. He visited his son only once, in 1971, when Barack was 10 years old.

Yoko's love for John and John's love for Yoko was the heart at the center of their own personal peace movement. Both artists, they influenced each other, creating an alchemical effect bigger than either one could achieve on their own. From my perspective, theirs was a true partnership-- transgressive and transcendent and transformative, a love story for all time.

I stumbled upon these videos while reading Cara at Curvature's fascinating
feminist analysis
of Yoko.

Here it is: our moment of economic truth. We're standing at that
historic fork in the road where the nation decides, now and for the
foreseeable future, whether it's going to hang on to the catastrophic
assumptions of the free-market fundamentalists and rely once more on
the nostrums that have so far failed to fix the mess, or take a bold
step down a new, more progressive path that will finally re-empower the
American people to build an economy that works for us all.

As
usual, the conservatives have absolutely no conscience about what they
did to create this mess. If they did, they'd all be holed up in their
gated communities or on their private islands, embarrassed into silence
at best and terrified of peasant uprisings at worst. Instead, they're
jetting into D.C. en masse in a last-ditch attempt to head the country
off -- or at least make sure that any money that does get spent ends
up, as it always has, in their pockets.

To that end, the
self-serving myths are starting to fly so thick and fast that the staff
here at CAF has been working full-time to keep ahead of them. Here's
some of what they're flinging in this latest B.S. storm -- and what you
need to know to fire back.

1. The proposed recovery package is too big.

False.
Most progressive economists agree (and Paul Krugman is downright
emphatic) that it's going to take a minimum of a trillion dollars of
well-placed investment to pull our economy out of this ditch. This is
no time for half-measures, blue-ribbon committees, pilot projects, or
trial balloons: this is a life-or-death crisis that requires immediate
and massive intervention.

"Today, hip-hop’s colonization of the global imagination, from
fashion runways in Europe to dance competitions in Asia, is
Disney-esque. This transformation has bred an unprecedented cultural
confidence in its black originators. Whiteness is no longer a threat,
or an ideal: it’s kitsch to be appropriated, whether with gestures like
Combs’s “white parties” or the trickle-down epidemic of collared shirts
and cuff links currently afflicting rappers. And an expansive
multiculturalism is replacing the us-against-the-world bunker mentality
that lent a thrilling edge to hip-hop’s mid-1990s rise.

Peter Rosenberg,
a self-proclaimed “nerdy Jewish kid” and radio personality on New
York’s Hot 97 FM—and a living example of how hip-hop has created new
identities for its listeners that don’t fall neatly along lines of
black and white—shares another example: “I interviewed [the St. Louis
rapper] Nelly this morning, and he said it’s now very cool and in
to have multicultural friends. Like you’re not really considered hip or
‘you’ve made it’ if you’re rolling with all the same people.”

Just as Tiger Woods forever changed the country-club culture of
golf, and Will Smith confounded stereotypes about the ideal Hollywood
leading man, hip-hop’s rise is helping redefine the American
mainstream, which no longer aspires toward a single iconic image of
style or class. Successful network-television shows like Lost, Heroes, and Grey’s Anatomy feature wildly diverse casts, and an entire genre of half-hour comedy, from The Colbert Report to The Office,
seems dedicated to having fun with the persona of the clueless white
male. The youth market is following the same pattern: consider the Cheetah Girls, a multicultural, multiplatinum, multiplatform trio of teenyboppers who recently starred in their third movie, or Dora the Explorer,
the precocious bilingual 7-year-old Latina adventurer who is arguably
the most successful animated character on children’s television today.
In a recent address to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies,
Brown Johnson, the Nickelodeon executive who has overseen Dora’s rise,
explained the importance of creating a character who does not conform
to “the white, middle-class mold.” When Johnson pointed out that Dora’s
wares were outselling Barbie’s in France, the crowd hooted in delight.

Pop culture today rallies around an ethic of multicultural inclusion
that seems to value every identity—except whiteness. “It’s become
harder for the blond-haired, blue-eyed commercial actor,” remarks
Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, of the Hispanic marketing firm Enlace. “You
read casting notices, and they like to cast people with brown hair
because they could be Hispanic. The language of casting notices is
pretty shocking because it’s so specific: ‘Brown hair, brown eyes,
could look Hispanic.’ Or, as one notice put it: ‘Ethnically
ambiguous.’”

“I think white people feel like they’re under siege right now—like
it’s not okay to be white right now, especially if you’re a white
male,” laughs Bill Imada, of the IW Group. Imada and Newman-Carrasco
are part of a movement within advertising, marketing, and
communications firms to reimagine the profile of the typical American
consumer. (Tellingly, every person I spoke with from these industries
knew the Census Bureau’s projections by heart.?"

"Those who eulogized Grant did not address the shooting, which was
captured on video by at least two BART riders and has stirred outrage
among those who believe the incident was tantamount to an execution. At
virtually the moment the service was getting under way, the lawyer and
union representative for the officer who shot Grant, Johannes Mehserle,
were submitting his resignation to BART officials."